1. Field of the Disclosure
The present application relates to growing and harvesting algae in seawater, and more particularly, relates to growing and harvesting algae in a mixture of seawater and feather additives.
2. Description of Related Art
Seawater presents plentiful and viable resource for growing and harvesting microalgae for commercial production. Using seawater as a nutrient source for microalgae offers many advantageous possibilities. It provides an inexpensive resource to grow microalgae and it is highly accessible. Purification of seawater for human consumption is difficult and costly. Growing microalgae in seawater reduces a salinity of the seawater and as a result, the purification of seawater with reduced salinity is easier. The reduced salinity of seawater after growing microalgae is due to the fact that microalgae naturally purify the aqueous saline solution in which they inhabit. Microalgal production facilities built along coastlines or farther out to sea may serve to facilitate large-scale microalgae production for commercial purposes. Alternatively, it is possible to modify a large cargo ship such as an oil tanker to serve as a microalgae production facility. The ship may intake seawater to constantly supply the microalgae with necessary nutrients. It may be possible to design a type of mobile microalgal production facility which can ship the microalgae byproducts to commercial ports for further processing. For example, a fleet of tanker ships may be designed that not only transport biofuel, but also their engines are running off of the biofuel and they are perpetually producing the biofuel. This application aims to optimize a microalgal biomass production output. Feather additive mixed with seawater and a specific strain of microalgae optimizes biomass output under controlled conditions.